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OPINION:
Less than 24 hours after Israel, one of America’s closest allies, launched missiles at Iran, the U.S. Army marked its 250th anniversary with a military parade in Washington.
The celebration, intended to honor America’s legacy of strength, stood in stark contrast with a sobering truth: Years of underinvestment in modernization and the burden of prolonged conflicts have eroded the U.S. warfighting readiness.
Fortunately for the American people, President Trump’s proposed $1 trillion defense budget signals a strategic shift to rebuild and restore the U.S. military advantage. Still, with threats accelerating and crises erupting on their own timelines, transformation must be pursued relentlessly.
Increased spending is not enough. What we need is smarter spending, and we need it now.
The United States spends more on defense than the next nine countries combined. Last year’s defense budget approached $1 trillion and represented more than 3% of our gross domestic product. Yet according to the Government Accountability Office, almost 20 years of ongoing conflict have destroyed America’s military readiness. The Heritage Foundation’s 2024 Index of U.S. Military Strength went further, rating the United States military as weak relative to the force needed to defend national interests on a global scale.
What’s needed in response to the “12-day war” between Iran and Israel is a defense strategy that recognizes the role of innovation in achieving the speed and adaptability essential to victory.
Mr. Trump’s executive order on military readiness, coupled with the reconciliation package recently signed into law, reorients the Defense Department toward faster, more efficient operations.
The Trump administration has prioritized military readiness by proposing to spend $1 trillion on defense and homeland security, reflecting its belief that readiness begins with strategic investment.
The budget provides additional defense capabilities and funds the modernization of their delivery. The reconciliation bill included $16 billion to expedite innovation and field low-cost, high-impact weapons systems. Another $380 million is aimed at automating administrative processes and improving cybersecurity. It also allocates more than $2 billion to support organizations such as the Defense Innovation Unit and the Office of Strategic Capital.
These numbers signal a significant change in the way America prepares for the future of war. By modernizing legacy information technology logistics, weapon systems and manpower models, the U.S. can reduce long-term costs, accelerate capability delivery and reallocate personnel to higher-impact missions.
The software modernization outlined in this defense bill concerns not only cyber defense but also building a faster, smarter, more resilient force across every domain of warfare.
Beyond hardware, modern readiness demands intelligent, adaptive software that moves at the speed of mission. MetroStar’s AI-enabled solutions, for example, are built to rapidly integrate into operational environments, automate critical workflows and provide real-time decision advantage across domains.
By combining emerging technologies with agile acquisition strategies, defense leaders can accelerate capability delivery, reduce cognitive burden on warfighters and ensure the force is prepared for tomorrow’s threats today.
Mr. Trump’s proposed defense budget is a welcome signal that a new generation of agile, software-centric defense technology companies is being taken seriously. Now, recognition must be matched with reform. Not constrained by outdated procurement cycles or industrial age models, these innovators must be actively integrated into the modernization of America’s military software factories, data pipelines and artificial intelligence-enabled weapon systems.
Congress is beginning to take steps that reflect the urgency of modernization. Bipartisan proposals introduced this year would establish regional defense technology hubs to decentralize innovation and expand access to national security missions nationwide. In addition to economic development, establishing these hubs is a strategic play to broaden the innovation base, diversify the talent pipeline and bring cutting-edge capabilities closer to end users in uniform.
America’s geopolitical competitors are not standing still. The competition is no longer defined by raw military size but rather by strategic advantage: who can sense, decide and act faster through seamless integration of digital and physical capabilities.
Readiness in this new era isn’t measured solely by the sophistication of our weapons; it’s about how quickly we can field them, the resilience of our supply and data infrastructure, and how effectively we enable our warfighters with real-time intelligence, autonomy and decision advantage.
With the still-smoldering conflict in the Middle East as a warning, one thing is clear: Warfare is changing right before our eyes, and our defense industrial base must evolve faster or risk falling behind. These fights won’t wait for us to catch up. America must be ready.
• Ali Reza Manouchehri is the Iranian-born CEO and co-founder of MetroStar, an AI-enabled defense tech solutions provider based in Reston, Virginia. He lived through Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and immigrated to the United States during the Iran-Iraq War in 1982. His early experiences instilled a deep belief in the promise of America and the responsibility to safeguard it by modernizing our national defense and strengthening the digital industrial base.
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